BOND

23.

Am I just hanging in

Just so we can drown like the love we thought we found?

~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.

Elena, still not believing that she had heard right, pushed Joey away and took a couple of steps away from him.

Joey waited for her to say something, keeping quiet.

"So what you're just going to stop doing whatever it is that you do?" she asked incredulously.

He shook his head and took a step towards her, "I can't stop completely. There is no getting out of this world once you get in."

"But?" she prompted, tilting her head upwards as he closed the gap she had created between them.

Joey, pulling his attention away from her eyes, said carefully, "I haven't thought this through, Elena. All I know is that I want us to have something more than just being friends. And I'm willing to do whatever I can to get that."

Elena stared back at him blankly, "Joey you've murdered people, God knows how many."

With a pained expression, he said, "I know it might not make a difference to you, but I have never killed someone who didn't deserve to be dead."

Elena recoiled away from him violently, "You don't get to make that choice! To play God!"

Pulling on a harsh mask, Joey said, "When you have a gun pointed at you, you do."

She bit on her lip to stop it from quivering at the thought of him being in danger, "So you've never killed an innocent person? Never once?" She didn't know if she could handle the answer but things like this needed to be asked.

Joey answered as truly as he could, "I have never killed someone who wasn't a threat to me or my family."

Elena cursed softly and said to him, "That does not make it okay. Don't you get that?"

"For one minute, forget about everything I told you yesterday," Joey pleaded. "Just think of me as who I have been to you from the start. Think of what you know me as," he shook his head, "not the monster I can be."

Elena couldn't bring herself to argue against what he had called himself. A monster. She looked down at the ground, he was standing close enough for her to see his white sneakers.

"You would have given me a chance, Elena. You would've given us a chance," Joey pressed on, anticipating her to deny it but to his relief she didn't.

Still not looking up at him, she said, "But it's not the same. How can I look at you and not think of how many people have spent the last few seconds of their life doing the same?"

Not overthinking about her reply, Joey bouldered on, "That's your main problem out of all this, right?"

Elena snapped her head up to look him dead in the eye, "All of this is messed up! You're sixteen, for fuck's sake! More than that, you're," she paused, searching for the right word, "You're you. You hate it when people hurt the ones close to you, don't you see that you're doing the same thing to somebody else?"

She searched his eyes for an answer since he verbally wasn't going to give her one.

For the life of him Joey could not make up a sentence in his mind. Talking about all of it to somebody not involved in it was turning out to be harder than he had thought it would be.

Elena sighed, her resolve crumbling at the look on his face, at how speechless he was. Her thoughts suddenly crystal clear, she said, "I need some time to process all this."